Fierce and straight to the point

Cobra Khan are (from left) Dean Cameron, Ben Lee, Milon Williams, Andy Morton and Sarah Fox.

Sarah Fox's mum must have got a fright when she showed up to see her daughter's band, after telling the doorman she was there to see "Chaka Khan".

As the keyboardist in Auckland band Cobra Khan, Fox doesn't exactly take her cues from Chicago funk and soul. Hopefully mum didn't mind the songs that mentioned "razorblades", "craving blood" and "choking and burning" either.

Their launch gig for EP Sleepless Lions tonight will be a full throttle affair. And they're one of the darker acts on the Taste of Chaos tour in October. "We just want to write songs that plough through and get to the point," says Williams of the band's aggressive style.

The former Sommerset guitarist sticks to what he calls "the principles of hardcore" but when he and drummer Andy Morton first started the band in February last year, they wanted a point of difference.

Inspired by Detroit band Murder City Devils - another mum-friendly band - they invited Fox and her Hammond organ into the fold.

"A lot of people were pretty apprehensive at the start, like, what's she doing there?" says Williams.

"It was almost like introducing a new-wave element. But you'll notice the keys aren't really smacking you in the face, they're kind of filling a void. The intention was to avoid it sounding like circus music. If it was any louder or any more prominent it would probably crack me up."

With his inner frontman itching to get out and a raft of songs that didn't fit with Sommerset, Williams started Cobra Khan as a side project with Ian King from the Bleeders.

Then King got busy and Sommerset split. He hooked up with former Day One drummer Andy Morton, and started writing. "I wanted to do something that was a bit harder edged [than Sommerset]. The first few Cobra Khan songs were way more thrashy."

Bass player Dean Cameron wasn't interested in joining another band when the pair approached him last year. He'd done his time in Balance and had moved on to work behind the scenes at Rianz.

"But then Milon came to me with a demo and I thought, wow, this is really good," he says. "I couldn't say no."

Former Cold by Winter's Ben Lee was recruited on guitar, plus Fox, and Cobra Khan launched into touring. Like the relentlessness of Sleepless Lions, they've barely paused for breath, touring with the Bleeders and Kitsch, supporting the Misfits and Nashville Pussy and playing the Big Day Out.

But bringing together musos who were used to playing in other bands wasn't easy.

Morton still played like a metal drummer and had to train himself away from his machine gun style.

"If we sounded anything like all the bands together," says Williams, "I'd cover my ears and scream."

Instead, the band have emerged with their own brittle style, as can be heard on bFM favourite Wrapped in Plastic, which Williams originally penned for Sommerset. At just seven songs, Sleepless Lions is all over in 20 minutes. It'll smack you over the head with its ferocity.

So will the lyrics.

"I listen to a lot of heavy metal but my take on lyrics is not directly personal experience. It's quite fictional. It's really dark imagery but still tried to use it in the present time without going back to dragons and knights like metal, just trying to make my own kind of story-telling."

Dementia, for example, is a "light-hearted" ode to over-hyped bands inspired by a music video by Welsh rockers Lostprophets.

"In the video they just totally revamp their image. I don't understand it."

That's not how Cobra Khan approach things, adds Cameron, a member of the Independent Music New Zealand board. "We're not faddish. We don't have sponsors who dress us top to toe."

"We're taking a humble approach," says Williams. "We don't want to shove it down people's throats or we'd sound like hypocrites with that song. We're not on Myspace every two seconds or texting people telling them to vote us on to music TV. We're just a band that make music for ourselves."

* Cobra Khan play at the Rising Sun, K Rd, tonight